The Old Blog in the Desert

There is something unforgettable about a Lost Coast summer, like the scent of honeysuckle in the breeze. In ’72, when I was a scrawny kid with more curiosity than sense, I spent my days trailing behind my Uncle Adam. He wasn’t a big man, but he had a laugh that scared the crows off a cornfield.

Uncle Adam didn’t say much, but when he did, you listened. That July, he took me to the blackberry patch in the gully across from his house.

Now, if you’ve never picked blackberries, let me tell you, it’s a battle. Those thorns will tear you up worse than a cat in a knapsack.

Uncle Adam handed me a dented tin pail and said, “Boy, you gotta respect the bush. Reach in gentle, or it’ll fight back.”

I reckon I didn’t listen because, by noontime, my arms looked like I’d wrestled a porcupine.

We sat under a tree to eat our haul, juice staining our fingers purple. I was fussing about the scratches, but Uncle Adam just grinned.

“Life’s like that patch,” he said. “You want the sweet, you gotta take a few pricks. Ain’t no shortcut.”

While too young to get it then, I chewed on those berries and nodded as if I understood. Years later, when dodging bills and heartaches, I’d think about that moment, the thorns, and Uncle Adam’s words.

Life don’t hand you the good stuff without a fuss. You gotta reach in, get a little scratched, and keep going. And ain’t that the truth?

Still, I can taste those blackberries, sweet as summer, and hear Uncle Adam’s laugh. Some lessons, I reckon, you carry forever.

The world holds strange truths when you’re six—or maybe seven. Grown-ups call them superstitions, but back then, they were rules. Real ones. Like the one that said, if a buttercup flower left a yellow reflection on your chin, it meant you had a secret crush.

But sometimes, the yellow stuck. Mine always did.

Her name was Goldie. Honest to goodness, that was her name. And yes, her hair caught the sun like sugar syrup, and her laugh sounded like the jingle of the ice cream truck.

One afternoon, we sat under the jungle gym, hiding from the game of Red Rover because we were both hopeless at it. The sun was low and slanty, and our shadows stretched across the mulch like two friendly ghosts.

She poked my arm, holding up a Buttercup flower, before slipping it under my chin, “You have yellow!” she whispered dramatically.

My heart did something weird then. Skipped, maybe–or it hiccuped.

“You know what that means,” she said, grinning wide, “you have a secret crush.”

My face betrayed me. I could feel it turning pink.

Then Goldie leaned in, close enough for her whisper to tickle my ear. “It’s okay,” she said. “I have one too.”

And then she kissed me—on the cheek, right there under the jungle gym.

We didn’t say much after that. We just sat quietly, sharing the silence like it was the best toy on the playground.

We both knew it wouldn’t last forever–first crushes never do.

But sometimes, when I see a Buttercup flower, I smile because once, a long time ago, a girl named Goldie kissed me while under the jungle gym. And for a moment, the Buttercup told the truth.

A mother is pleading for help after her adult son disappeared under suspicious circumstances last summer, with no contact since July 31, 2024. Stephanie Sanders, who resides in Oklahoma, says her son, 28-year-old Dylan Hollingsworth, last reached out via text message from somewhere in Los Angeles.

According to Stephanie, Dylan told her he was relocating to Colorado with a woman he had recently met. During that final exchange, he also mentioned a disturbing detail about a man he had a confrontation with at a local gym in Los Angeles and allegedly was seeking revenge.

“Dylan moved around a lot, so I don’t have a permanent address for him,” Stephanie said. “But he never missed a holiday. When the holidays came and went with no word from him, I knew something was very wrong.”

Since the last text message in July, Dylan has not been active on social media, and his phone service is no longer active. Stephanie, who works 50 to 60 hours a week, has tried to search through missing persons pages but says the trail from Los Angeles to Colorado is too broad without more specific information.

No official missing person report appears filed to date, and no authorities are actively searching for Dylan.

“I have no names, no address, nothing. Just that last message,” Stephanie said.

Stephanie hopes that by sharing her son’s story publicly, someone who may have seen or interacted with Dylan will come forward. She describes him as kind, often restless, but never the type to vanish without a word.

Dylan is caucasian, with brown eyes and hair. He stands 6 foot one inch tall and has several tattoos, including one on his right forearm which reads, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline,” and a sailship and lightning bolt in yellow on his left shoulder and bicep.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact their local authorities, missing persons organizations, or 702-324-2131.

Time is running out, and my mind is slipping more these days—or so it seems. I used to brush it off as age or poor sleep, maybe both, but lately, the line between what’s real and imagined has grown faint and slippery, like a soap bar in a hot shower.

After work this morning, I was in aisle 17 of the home improvement box store, eye-balling hollow-core bathroom doors. I picked one that looked close enough—the same size and basic white—and wrestled it onto a cart that seemed determined to veer left no matter what I did.

On my way to the register, I stopped at the lighting section and squinted through a shelf of bulbs, trying to decipher the difference between lumens and watts like I was back in high school algebra. Eventually, I grabbed a soft glow bulb that promised “warmth and clarity,” which sounded like what our bathroom needed.

Our nightly routine is like clockwork and the ticking of the old wall clock in the hallway. The bathroom night light goes on at dusk and stays on until morning.

My night vision isn’t what it used to be, and the light helps me navigate those late-night trips to the porcelain throne without incident. Or rather, it usually does.

But last night, the light was out. Not flickering. Not dim. Just–gone.

Grumbling under my breath, I shuffled through the darkness toward the bathroom, guiding myself with muscle memory and hope. After finishing my business—thankfully without incident, as far as I could tell—I turned toward the sink to wash my hands. The moonlight slipping through the small window cast long shadows, but nothing helpful.

That’s when I saw the face.

It hovered just behind my reflection in the mirror. Pale, round, expressionless. Watching me. Silent.

I didn’t think. I reacted.

With a grunt and a spin, I launched a textbook right elbow, one I used to win bar fights in the Marine Corps and break drywall in my younger years. The face met my elbow, and we crashed backward through the bathroom door.

Rolling, I came up crouching, expecting a further attack. The thud brought my wife upright from sleep.

“What the HELL, Tom?” Mary shouted, snapping the bedside lamp on.

There, half-straddled over what was her work shirt hanging from the back of the door, I blinked up at her in confusion. The “face” was a crumpled logo on a polo shirt.

“No face, no one,” I mumbled, still catching my breath. “Just…just a friggin’ shirt.”

“Jeez,” she muttered, inspecting the shirt. “You practically destroyed it.”

“At least clothes don’t bruise,” I said, trying for a joke.

“That one does,” she snapped. “And now I have nothing to wear that doesn’t make me look like I’ve been in a bar brawl.”

True to her word, Mary didn’t wear the shirt that day. Opting instead for something lighter, she said. Less battered. Less dramatic. But she hung the replacement up all the same.

“That one,” she said, kissing me on the cheek before we headed out the door, “you’re not allowed to fight with. Promise me.”

“I’ll try,” I told her, chuckling. “But if it gives me a dirty look again, all bets are off.”

Rubbing my elbow, I looked at her shirt hanging from the living room closet door and could almost laugh now.

Almost.

Yesterday, day three, 1:49 p.m.–and the Nevada sun beat down like it wanted me gone. My claim–twenty feet of dry, cracked earth–lay baking in the late Spring heat, marked by four crooked rock cairns and misplaced confidence.

There, I leaned on my camp shovel, panting, sweat stinging my eyes and grit in my teeth. Every muscle in my back ached, my jeans were stiff with dust, and my water jug was sweating more than I was.

I’m a dreamer, maybe an idiot. It depends on who you ask.

I found the spot a week ago, wandering farther than I meant. I wasn’t looking for anything particular–just trying to clear my head.

That’s when I saw an old dry wash twisting through the brush, maybe four feet wide in places, choked with rounded stones and rust-colored gravel. The kind of cut that comes from water–fast-moving and heavy at some point in the past.

The sides had scalloped from old floods, with layers of sediment packed tight. High up along the bank, I spotted what looked like black sand trapped between slabs of fractured bedrock–nothing major, but enough to make me stop. A few pieces of quartz, too–white veins spidering through brown rock–and one chunk with a yellow stain I couldn’t quite explain.

There were no footprints, no trash, no claim markers. Just a quiet, weathered cut in the earth that hadn’t seen human hands in who knows how long.

It’s what got me.

It wasn’t the color or the shape of the rocks–it was the feel of the place. The way the old streambed twisted off the ridge like it was trying to hide something.

The old timers say, “Where water slows, gold goes.”

Crouching, I scooped up a handful of dirt. The wash had all the signs–a couple of tight bends, an inside curve where floodwaters might have dropped their load, and even a slight natural riffle formed by rock clusters near the bend.

It wasn’t proof, not by a long shot, but it was enough. Enough to believe. Enough to stake a claim, dig in, and see if that little whisper of instinct was right.

Three days into my fool’s errand, I’d scraped together about one-sixteenth of an ounce of gold, not worth justifying the blisters on my palms. I wiped my face and stared at the stubborn third boulder I’d been trying to move.

“You win again,” I muttered, giving it a half-hearted kick.

It didn’t budge–instead, it sat there like it was laughing at me.

Dry panning is less a method and more a test of patience–maybe faith. There’s no creek here, no water at all.

Just me, a battered green pan, and dirt. Lots and lots of dirt.

I knelt, scooped a handful of sand, gravel, and powdery silt into the pan, and began to swirl. I tried to mimic the movement of water, just like I’d seen in those old prospector videos late at night when I should’ve been sleeping.

Tilt, swirl, tap, let the lighter sediment spill over the side while the heavier stuff—hopefully gold—settles. I’d done it hundreds of times now.

My fingers were cramped, my breath shallow. Time and again, I tapped the pan’s edge, coaxing any shimmer to reveal itself.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Just one more flake.”

It felt ridiculous, standing alone in a forgotten wash, begging dirt to turn into dreams. But here I was, dust in my hair, sunburn on my neck, and more hope than sense.

Sam Clemens’ voice echoed, “A mine’s a hole in the ground owned by a liar.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “but at least I’m an honest liar.”

Gently, I blew across the surface, a trick I’d picked up online through YouTube. It’s supposed to lift the lighter dust and leave behind anything with weight. Most times, all that happened was dirt–blown back into my face.

The pan was no different—until a glint caught my eye. Tiny. Barely there. But it gleamed like a wink from the earth itself.

“Gotcha,” I said, grinning as I dropped the one lousy speck into my little glass vial.

As I packed up my truck, I remembered Sam’s final words about digging in the earth, “Mining’s a fool’s game. Hard, hot, and you’ll starve one way or another.”

So picture this–I’m out doing my DHL rounds, walking up to this house with a package in hand–when I hear the growl. Not just any growl. It was the kind of deep, soul-rattling sound that says, “I have waited my entire life to bite someone in a uniform.”

I glance to my right, and there he is—a dog wedged behind a wooden fence, nose jammed through the slats like a fuzzy little battering ram. His lips are pulled back in full snarl mode, flashing every one of his suspiciously well-maintained teeth like he just left the vet and wasn’t happy about it.

Now, I don’t usually back down from a fight, especially not one issued by a pint-sized fur missile with a Napoleon complex. So I reached into my pocket, pulled out a dog treat–standard issue for moments like these– and slid it through the fence like I was handling a live grenade. Smooth, calculated, diplomatic.

You’d think that’d settle things. It didn’t.

He snatched the treat with a growl that got even louder, then locked eyes with me–chewing it slowly like I was supposed to feel bad about existing. Message received.

So, I gently set the package down, backed away like I was leaving a bear cave, and said, “You win this round, buddy.”

I’m pretty sure he’s still mad at me for being born.

My Grandpa used to say, “You can boil a rock and call it supper, if you look at it the right way.”

He said that one night during the winter of ’69, when all we had for dinner was cabbage soup, dry biscuits, and apple butter—rationed between six people like it was gold dust. And somehow, he still smiled when he said it.

That kind of “look-on-the-bright-side” attitude ran in my family like cowlicks and crooked toes. My dad was the same way.

When the well pump busted and we had to draw water by hand, he just shook his head and said, “Guess we’ll all get strong forearms and fresh air.”

I think that was the year I learned to cuss under my breath.

So, naturally, I tried to inherit their sunny-side-up gene, even when I read the Nevada Territorial News this morning and felt like someone had swapped out my morning coffee for a ladle of ice water. No taxes on tips and overtime? Well, that’s nice for folks still working for their supper.

For me, I’m pulling from the piggy bank I spent fifty-plus years stuffing—only to find Uncle Sam reaching in for another fistful. They used to say you can’t tax what’s taxed already, like reheating leftovers three times and still calling it fresh.

But here we are—paying on Social Security, which we already paid into, and then we’ll pay again when we spend it on anything with a barcode or a sales tag. I sat there scratching my head, remembering what had changed since 1983 when Reagan still smiled like a man with a plan and Social Security wasn’t a third-hand coat.

Anyway, I tried to think positively, like my folks would’ve. The bright side. The upside. The sliver of pie crust clinging to the plate. I even tried to imagine Grandpa in the afterlife, shaking his head at the idea of taxing the same dollar three times. Probably laughing. Probably stirring a pot of invisible cabbage soup and calling it “retirement stew.”

I went outside and sat on the porch, letting the afternoon breeze chase off the frustration. Our neighbor Cleo—who wears a sunhat shaped like a UFO—came shuffling up the path with a grin like she knew a joke I didn’t.

“You see the news?” she asked.

I nodded. “Saw it. Read it. Digested it poorly.”

She chuckled and dropped a sack of tomatoes from her garden onto my lap. “Well, we’ll just keep planting. And hoping. And paying, I suppose.”

“Even when we can’t afford the seeds,” I said.

“Especially then,” she said, like she’d already rehearsed it.

I sliced one of those tomatoes and ate it with a sprinkle of salt. It tasted like sunshine and hard work. And somehow, that old family lesson—look what you are getting, and don’t worry about what you’re not—started to take hold.

It doesn’t make the taxes go away. It doesn’t fix Medicaid or put peanut butter in every lunch pail. But it does remind me that if I can still sit on my porch, share tomatoes with a neighbor, and watch the sky fade into the lavender kind of dusk, then maybe the soup ain’t second class.

Even if it’s mostly rocks.

The airport was a zoo with travelers darting around like caffeinated squirrels. Emma, a frazzled graphic designer with a penchant for overpacking, yanked her black suitcase off the baggage claim belt.

It looked exactly like hers—same scuffs, same slightly wobbly wheel. Emma didn’t think twice while hauling it to friend Sarah’s car.

At Sarah’s apartment, Emma unzipped the suitcase to grab her toothbrush. “Hey, can I borrow yours? I left mine at the hotel.”

Sprawled on the couch with a glass of wine, Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Um, no. Gross. Just grab it from your bag.”

Emma rummaged through the suitcase, then froze. “What the hell?”

She pulled out a plastic bag of milk—actual bagged milk, like some Canadian contraband. “This isn’t mine. Whose bag is this?”

Sarah sat up, intrigued. “No way. You grabbed the wrong suitcase?”

Emma dug deeper, her panic rising. “There’s no toothbrush. No laptop. No skin cream. Just… milk. And… is this a knife?”

She held up a gleaming blade with a suspiciously rusty stain.

Sarah’s eyes widened. “Is that blood?”

“Okay, no, it’s probably… ketchup?” Emma said unconvincingly.

She checked the luggage tag. “It says ‘Mary P.’ No phone number. Oh god, Mary has my bag. My laptop’s in there. My life is in there!”

Sarah peered over her shoulder. “Okay, calm down. Maybe Mary’s just a quirky grandma who likes bagged milk and… sharp objects.”

Emma kept digging, pulling out a Marc Jacobs scarf. “This is nice. Is Mary rich or psychotic?”

Emma then pulled a pistol from the bag. “What the…?”

“Put it back,” Sarah demanded.

Still not listening, Emma pulled out a black velvet pouch that felt oddly cold. “What’s this?”

Sarah leaned in. “Don’t open it. It’s probably cursed.”

Emma, never one to listen, unzipped it. A strange, icy void seemed to suck the warmth from the room. “It’s like a black hole in here. Wait—something bit me!”

She yanked her hand back, shaking it.

Sarah grabbed the pouch and zipped it shut. “Nope. We’re done. Put it all back before Mary turns out to be a mafia don.”

Emma’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then paled. “It’s not mine. This phone has 40 missed calls from… El Chapo?”

Sarah’s jaw dropped. “El Chapo? Okay, we’re not messing with Mary. Pack it up. We’re driving to the airport, and you’re yeeting this bag through the lost-and-found window.”

Emma nodded, shoving everything back in, though the milk bag sloshed ominously. “It won’t fit right. Screw it, I’ll toss it in a dumpster. Mary’s probably too busy running a drug cartel to notice.”

Sarah grabbed her keys. “Yeah, and if she has your bag, she knows your name and address. But let’s not think about that now. She won’t notice. Right?”

“Right,” Emma said, voice shaky. “She won’t notice.”

Meanwhile, in a sleek penthouse across town, Mary Poppins—the Mary Poppins, nanny by day, secret operative by night—opened Emma’s suitcase. Her eyes narrowed as she sifted through graphic novels and half-eaten granola bars. “Where the hell is my gun?”

She pulled out a crumpled Post-it with Emma’s name and address. A slow, dangerous smile spread across her face. “Well, Emma, it seems we have a problem.”

Mary snapped the suitcase shut, her umbrella tapping the floor like a metronome of doom. “Time for a little visit. Practically perfect people don’t lose their luggage… or their custom Beretta.”

I was sitting on the porch that morning like I often do, half-listening to the barn swallows argue under the eaves while nursing a mug of strong coffee and stronger opinions about the state of my bunions when I heard the familiar rattle of Alex’s little SUV come chortling up the lane.

Alex is our daughter-in-law by law but daughter by everything else. She’s married to our boy, and bless him, he married way up. Alex is a California-born Lantina and straight-up Valley Girl, full of fire, brightness, and sayings that don’t always come out the way she means but always land just right.

She parked with the usual flourish—one tire just shy of the flower bed—and hopped out of the car, waving something like she’d just found the last golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s. She was beaming like the Fourth of July and walking like she had something to tell that couldn’t wait on any text message.

“What you got there?” I asked, shading my eyes with one hand.

“It’s my renewed passport!” she sang, hopping up the porch steps two at a time.

“Well good for you,” I said, sitting up straighter. “Going somewhere?”

She held it up like a prize turkey. “Nope! Just means I’m an American citizen once again.”

I blinked. “Once again?”

She nodded like this made perfect sense. “Yeah, you know, renewed it. Now I’m good for another ten years. Official and everything.”

I chuckled into my coffee. “Sweetheart, I don’t think renewing your passport makes you a citizen again. You already were one.”

She waved a hand. “Details.”

Alex tends to speak in Technicolor. Her sentences come dressed in sequins and heels, even when headed to the grocery store. That girl could describe a paperclip and make it sound like a minor miracle.

And at that moment, with the sun catching her earrings and the passport flapping like a little blue bird in her hand, it was hard to argue with her logic.

“Well,” I said, scooting over so she could plop down next to me. “Welcome back to America, I guess.”

She laughed and patted my knee. “Feels good to be home.”

“Form up!” Staff Sergeant Callahan bellowed. “Ammo count, now!”

“Hazelwood, dry!” I yelled.

“Magnuson, one round left!” came the reply.

Before we could finish, enemy fighters charged across the jungle clearing–straight for us.

“Alpha here,” Callahan barked into the PRC. “Target my position, now!”

“Three-four, repeat that,” crackled the response.

“Artillery on my coordinates!” Callahan shouted.

“Four, say again, over,” the radio hissed.

“Four-two, drop shells on my position, over!” he roared.

As the rounds wailed overhead, Callahan grinned at me. “We gotta stop getting ourselves into shit like this.”

I tried to laugh, but the first blast lifted us off the ground, slamming us into the dirt and knocking the wind from our bodies.